Speeding up computational chemistry

Computational chemistry which is needed for theoretical molecular nanotechnology research will be greatly boosted with new hardware coming out this year and in following years. By the end of the year a double precision Nvidia Telsa could boost speeds of computational chemistry applications by 300 times. The speeds could increase by 3 times or more per year.

Intel is developing “adaptive circuits” within a processor that would determine the minimum amount of performance required for a task. “We have a brain in the chip,” Bryan Casper, principal engineer for Intel’s Circuit Research Lab in Hillsboro, said. All power associated with a task is turned down to a “just-enough” level.

A prototype of the technology was demonstrated in a PCI Express card with a chip that consumed one-tenth the power of a card with today’s chip technology, or 2.7 milliwatts versus 20 to 30 milliwatts. Reducing power consumption is critical, given that using today’s technology to power a PCI Express card with a bandwidth of a terabit per second would require 100 watts of energy, Casper said.

Researchers showed a prototype of a Wi-Fi card with firmware that automatically turned off the power when the card was not in use. The technology also knew when to power up to receive or transmit data packets. Such cards use from 50% to 70% less power than standard wireless cards, researchers said.

Harrison demonstrated a pager-size device that could be hooked on a belt, and sense whether the wearer was bicycling, running, standing, using a Stairmaster exercise machine, or walking. In the demo, the device’s choice was displayed on a screen in the form of percentages, since power walking, for example, could be considered half walking and half running. The idea behind the research is to make computing as unobtrusive as possible in everyday life.

so by the end of 2007, $60,000 for 12 teraflops, $10,000 for a nice 8-core workstation, $15,000 for 512 GB of enterprise solid state flash drive. 100 times faster how much you would buy in early 2007.

By the end of 2008, $60,000 double precision and 36 teraflops, $10,000 for nice 32 core system, $20,000 for 2 Terabytes of enterprise solid state flash drive. 300 times faster than what could be bought in early 2007.

by the end of 2009, $60,000 for 100 Teraflops, $10,000 for nice 80 core system, $20,000 for 4 Terabytes of enterprise solid state flash, 4000 qubit quantum computing molecular simulator. 900+ times faster than what could be bought in early 2007.